Red, White and Royal Blue director Matthew López has a clarification to make for fans of his smash-hit movie about the romance between an English prince and America’s First Son: unfortunately, there is no three-hour cut, as was previously reported. (There never was.) But there are deleted scenes, including one that he knows fans immediately clocked during the trailer. Yes, there’s a reason for that missing Cornetto scene.
The long-awaited film adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s best-selling book hit Prime Video last week and quickly became the no. 1 movie on the streaming platform. Starring Taylor Zakhar Perez as First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz and Nicholas Galitzine as the UK’s Prince Henry, the movie is already so popular that fans have been clamoring for more, and López is here to provide all the hidden details and secret moments.
Below, the director and screenwriter — also known for his work as a playwright, including the Broadway production The Inheritance — talked extensively to Teen Vogue about his favorite scenes, Galitzine and Perez beating the rumors they didn’t have chemistry, and whether or not we’ll get a Red, White and Royal Blue sequel. Spoilers below.
Teen Vogue: How does it feel now that the film is out in the world and you’re seeing reactions pouring in?
Matthew López: It feels amazing. You know, you always want this, you seldom get this. First of all, I think it’s a testament to the enduring nature of Casey’s story and Casey’s characters. I think the thing that caused people to fall in love with the book is very likely what’s causing them to fall in love with the movie. I’m very grateful that fans of the book have agreed to take the ride…you certainly don’t want to put out a film adaptation of a beloved novel and have fans disappointed. It just feels amazing, especially for me, as a first-time filmmaker, to have my first movie be as lovingly received as it has been this weekend.
TV: Absolutely. So, I was actually at the New York screening at Lincoln Center where you and Casey were, where there were tons of screaming fans. It was so cool to have the opportunity to sit in a theater with fans and watch it, since this is a streaming film, ‘cause that’s the best experience.
ML: That was like being at the Eras concert.
TV: They literally screamed for every supporting character, including David the dog.
ML: Galitzine got upstaged by David the dog. (Laughs.) It was very funny ‘cause there were two screenings going simultaneously. One was the one that you were in, and one was for the Broadway community — it was very important to me because I come from theater. So we had the casts of Some Like It Hot, Kimberly Akimbo, & Juliet, and New York, New York there. So I was going back and forth — I went into the theater with all the fans, it was insane, it was like a rock concert. It was amazing to get this very immediate, full-throated, fully voiced reaction to the film by the people who I knew had a lot to do with the book’s success. And then I would go over to the Broadway room and everyone was having a great time, but it was a little more, you know, sedate.
TV: One of my favorite parts is when they’re in Paris, and Alex talks about being a young person of color coming up from Texas and not seeing anybody who looked like himself or his dad in politics, and Henry’s response to that simply being: “I’m learning.” I don’t know if you were in the theater for that one, but half the crowd was like, awwwww.
ML: Yeah, I was for that.
TV: I’m married to a white man, and I was like, that is the perfect thing a white man can say in that situation.
ML: I’m married to a white man, too. Speaking as someone who is a person of color married to a white man: that’s like the ultimate thing you ever want your white boyfriend or husband or partner to say. That’s it. “I’m learning.”
TV: Exactly. In your opening remarks [at the screening], you spoke about the strike and expressed solidarity with the actors and writers. It’s a shame that Nick and Taylor aren’t able to take in some of these fan screenings because of the strike.
ML: Yeah, I’ve been in touch with them. With a cast filled with striking actors, you know, we care about our work. We’re artists and we care about the things that we make. Especially something like this, with so much love and so much attention that has gone into the making of this film, the intentionality of this whole thing for everyone — it was real. And to not be able to celebrate it — I mean, forget doing promotion for it, right? Forget doing press. To not be able to publicly celebrate the work that we’ve done, that is unfortunate. But we also agree — in these text messages with the cast — nobody’s saying, boy, it’s a shame we’re on strike. Nobody’s saying that this isn’t worth it. The reason artists need unions is: we love it so much. We could probably be talked into doing it for free. Which is why we need unions, to keep us from those instincts. It’s like, no, actually, your time and your talents are quite valuable to these companies, and you shouldn’t be doing it for free. It’s unfortunate that’s where we find ourselves in the industry. Given the stakes, I don’t think that we have a choice. So it’s a sacrifice that everyone is making across the board. And one of the sacrifices is not getting to celebrate the work that we’ve made.
TV: So I read that you had to cut a lot from the film — tell me, is there actually a three-hour cut?
ML: Now this, alright. This has gotten a little out of hand. I need to set the record straight here. There was never a three-hour cut of this film. What I said to somebody — now I deeply regret saying it (laughs) — was the assembly of this film was about 2 hours and 45 minutes. But an assembly of a film, anyone who’s ever worked on a movie will tell you, an assembly is not a cut. An assembly is quite literally everything that’s in the script that was shot, strung together in order. And that first assembly came to about 2 hours and 45 minutes. So the movie was never 3 hours long and there was never a cut of the film that was 3 hours long. That is a misunderstanding that I need to correct everybody. There is no way on God’s green earth that anybody ever wants to see or ever should see the assembly of a film — to the point that not even my producers or the studio are allowed to see an assembly. It’s where the DGA goes, like only myself, my editor, and my editing team ever saw the assembly. So we’re not talking about a version of the film that was three hours long. We’re talking about when everything was put together without any consideration for timing, for pacing. All the film’s materials when strung together equaled 2:45. No one will ever see that.
TV: And you don’t want anyone to see that?
ML: No. I hate to break everyone’s heart, but the first cut of the film that I turned into the studio was about 2 hours and 7 minutes long. I’m very happy that everybody got very excited to hear that, but we all got a little ahead of ourselves there. There was never a 3-hour cut of the film.
TV: Okay, I will be happy to help you set the record straight. But there’s probably a handful of deleted scenes, though, right?
ML: Sure! There’s a handful of deleted scenes. As people have astutely noticed, there are things in the trailer that are not in the film.
TV: The Cornetto scene, I was going to ask—
ML: The Cornetto scene. The breakfast scene at Kensington Palace. Everybody’s wondering what happened to the scene [at] the campfire. You know, in the course of making a movie and in the course of telling a story — runtime is less important in the streaming age than it is in theatrical distribution, but what was important to me is that the film be the right length. You cut things for pacing. You never want the audience to get ahead of you, you never want the audience to be bored. [editor's note: a few days after this interview, López released the Cornetto scene!]
TV: I don’t think you would ever have that problem with this story and these characters.
ML: You say that — but you know, the polo sequence, which so many people have responded to very positively —
TV: The editing of that is so cool.
ML: You know, there was originally a whole scene where Alex comes to the polo match. He meets Princess Bea. Henry and Alex have a little exchange after Henry gets off the horse. They go to the tack room together. What we found as we were watching the film was that Nick and Taylor were so good together in the scene prior, in Alex's bedroom. And actually when we did a version of that scene in Alex's bedroom, we got a note from the studio, from producers, asking if we could try and make that scene shorter. “It’s good, but it’s long.” So we did our first test screening and I did a shortened version of that scene in Alex's bedroom. I was really hesitant to cut it back. But I wanted to be a good collaborator and prove that I can take a note and I'm willing to try things. We actually got more than a few comments back literally saying, “We wish that scene were longer.” So that, of course, was great for me. That scene in Alex's bedroom is the entire scripted scene. There's not a single cut from the script to the final cut. As a consequence, though, of that being a rather lengthy scene, I needed to then regain momentum. We've spent it all on this scene and it's worth it because that scene between the two of them is so dynamic and wonderful. But now we gotta get things going again.
So, I had a new editor come in halfway through because my first editor, Kristina Hetherington, who's wonderful, had another project that she had committed to doing. And our post dates got extended a bit and she had to leave, so Nick [Moore], my new editor coming in, took a look and he says, “I wanna try something with that polo match.” He spent a weekend of his own time doing something, and then he was ready to show me. He sat me down and said, “I’ve done something crazy.” I’m like, “Great. We love crazy.” He showed me what was largely the version of the polo match that is in the film and with that music. I was laughing with glee the whole time I'm watching it. He was nervous, 'cause he is taking like six minutes of story and condensed it into two and a half minutes. But it has so much drive. It's sexy. It tells the story. It was a real lesson for me as a first time filmmaker: if you expand time, then you need to maybe also learn how to contract time. So that was a big lesson to me in pacing.
TV: So we can safely assume things like the Cornetto scene or anything else that might’ve been cut, it was pacing.
ML: It was pacing. With the Cornetto scene — that scene in Kensington Palace Gardens, it does everything I needed it to do. Weirdly, the Cornetto scene actually relieved some of the tension between them. I was like, look, if you take the Cornetto scene out, then the tension from that first scene remains when they go into the interview scene. I learned a lot of it is about taking the energy from one scene and using it to help you get into the next scene. One of the things I learned as a playwright, which I found was applicable to cutting a movie, is if a scene isn't working, it might not be the scene itself. It might be the scene before. “Why isn’t the interview scene playing as well as we think it should?” Look at what came before: the Cornetto scene … The Cornetto scene is charming. But we also understood, narratively speaking, it was unnecessary. And more to the point, it sapped the tension out.
TV: Tell me about your own journey with the book and why you decided to take this on as your very first film as a director.
ML: Like pretty much everybody who read the book, I fell madly in love with it. I loved the characters so much. I really responded to Alex most especially. I had never encountered a character who is somewhat similar to me. I’m from the South [Panama City, Florida], I’m biracial, I’m Puerto Rican instead of Mexican and my mother isn’t president, but there’s so much of the story and the character that I could relate to. I knew that if I'd had access to a character like Alex when I was younger, it might've made my life a little easier.
TV: I’m from the South, too, from Louisiana, so I loved that you kept the Texas politics subplot in there. People are constantly writing off “deep red” states, like there aren't any Democratic, liberal, or progressive voters that live there. Like there's no possibility or reason to invest resources to try to flip these states. From your perspective, why was that important to keep in?
ML: Well, strategically as a storyteller, it was just really good to have that source of conflict and stakes. But it was also — I think you’ve seen over the last several years, a real ability on the part of younger people to determine the outcome of elections and to determine the conversation that is had around elections. It's a pretty politically engaged youth in America right now. I thought that there was something about this story that I could tell in order to validate that. Just as powerful for young bisexual people of color to identify with Alex, I think there’s something really compelling about watching someone in his twenties have a real say in the outcome of an election. Of course it helps that in this fiction, Alex is the son of the U.S. president with millions of Instagram followers. That said, the overriding theme that I wanted to touch on was that you are more powerful than you think. Or more to the point, you are more powerful than people will tell you you are.
TV: One of the other creative decisions I really loved was how you depicted their texting, the text flirting.
ML: I knew I needed to find a dynamic visual way of delivering that. And my greatest asset always in this film was Taylor and Nick. The greatest tool in my arsenal was always gonna be Taylor and Nick. So I wanted the actors to speak their text messages — once they start reading the texts, we’re in a whole new way of storytelling. I went through several iterations in post [production]. We talked about the standard split screen phone call like When Harry Met Sally, but I already knew that they had what it takes to hold our attention. Let’s put ‘em in the frame together and let them do the whole thing.
TV: You mention Taylor and Nick being your best tool. You’ve said before that their chemistry on Zoom was instant. You were able to tell straight away how good they would be together. Have you seen early fan reactions to promos where people somehow thought they weren't gonna have chemistry?
ML: I was told about this and I thought that was so weird because I was like, they’ve not seen the movie. How do they know? In the absence of real knowledge, people will invent whatever narrative comes to mind and it's fine, 'cause at the end of the day, people are talking about it. I wasn't worried, 'cause I knew something that everybody else in the world didn't know. But I thought that was very funny because I couldn't understand where it was coming from. I think it may have had to do something with this video that they did about the height-off or something like that?.
TV: They are very well cast as Henry and Alex.
ML: [Laughs] Yeah, tell me about it.
TV: I also read you said sometimes you had to tell them to shut up on set and do the scene.
ML: I do remember, there was one day — it was the scene in Alex’s bedroom, the one before the polo match. I was working with my camera operator trying to line up the shot, and we couldn’t because we were trying to get their attention and they were like [makes hand gestures and mimics rapid-fire talking to each other]. What they were talking about, who knows. But they were just like [does hand gestures again] going, going, going. And nobody could get [their attention]. Finally, I remember, I had to raise my voice and just yell, “Fellas! We’re trying to work here. Do you mind?” And [laughs] they were like, ‘Oh god,’ you know, they snapped to. But if that is your biggest problem as a filmmaker, that your two leads are too busy getting along, then you're in a good place.
Related: Red, White & Royal Blue Stars Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine Know Their Movie Is Hot
TV: That’s amazing. I don’t know if you’ve seen their GQ interview, but they’re exactly like that, going [rapid-fire] back and forth.
ML: You can’t shut ‘em up. It’s really great when you can harness it toward the work. And then [other times] you’re like, shut up, shut up, shut up, I’m trying to think here. I mean, obviously I love those two boys — I call them “the boys,” they're grown men — but it was such a delight to be on set with them every day. Of course, they did take their work very seriously, but there was this sense of play on set almost every day. We really found a lovely balance.
TV: I saw this viral tweet that you reposted about RWRB’s impact: [teaching others] that gay guys can do missionary, which is hilarious to me. I'm like, really, people?
ML: (Laughs) How do you not know that? I mean, I guess you don’t. It was hilarious that hey, in addition to being a movie, we’re also a teaching hospital. If that's the epiphany that somebody has had watching the film, then great.
TV: Yeah, and obviously we're just talking about a meme there, but I do have to catch myself, 'cause there is a conversation around calling them gay, or calling it a gay rom-com, versus no, let's make sure we're elevating Alex's bisexuality. Because that is an important part of the story. I think you’ve said that that was important to you to keep in the movie as well.
ML: Oh, 100 percent. I mean, it would be a despicable form of erasure if I had done anything else. Alex's bisexuality is as important to who he is as Henry's homosexuality is. Look, I understand that it's a very easy form of shorthand to say that it's two gay guys, right? I get it. I'm not such a nomenclature police that I'm going around correcting every single person. But what is very important to me is that people acknowledge the fact that this is the story of a gay man and a bisexual man falling in love with each other.
This is the story of a young bisexual man discovering that, in addition to being into women, he also — he kind of knows that he's into guys. He admits freely to Nora that he has messed around with guys before, but he's never really had the need to identify until he meets Henry. One of the things that was important to me is that line that he has in that scene with Nora, that “I can wrap my head around being low level into guys, what I'm really confused about is being into Henry.” That for me was key. I needed the audience to hear that, that we're not dealing with a person who's — Alex isn’t a closet case. Alex isn't confused. Actually, if there's anything Alex is confused about, it’s “why am I hot for my sworn enemy?” That's a more interesting story to me. Alex's bisexuality finally needs to be identified in order to articulate his feelings for Henry.
TV: That makes sense. It's a little different from the book, though, right?
ML: It's different from the book. And for a couple reasons. The main reason, honestly, was that I hired two actors who were a little older than the characters in the book. The funny thing is, the characters in the book are a certain age. A lot of people just sort of assume they were teenagers for some reason. I think you just assume people are the same age as you when you read, you know? And so there was this youthening of the characters to a degree that was not actually correct. Their ages are enumerated in the book.
I remember when we announced casting, everyone was like, they're too old. I was like, I've never heard of a 27-year-old being called too old for anything, other than preschool. Because I was presenting an Alex who was not an undergrad, he’s in law school, he’s like 27, 28. To my mind, the Alex that I was presenting via Taylor had enough self-knowledge to be able to say, yeah, that’s part of the constellation of my identity. So that is a huge change from the book, and it was one that I felt was really needed in order to present a more sort of on-his-way-to-being-self-actualized, as we find him. Because the other thing is, and I’ve spoken about this in other interviews, you’ve got precious time in a movie. Any time that I spend having Alex trying to figure out his sexuality is less time that I can devote to Alex trying to figure out his feelings for Henry. And that's what's really important, right? Henry.
TV: Okay. On casting Uma Thurman as president, that scene people are loving where she's talking to Alex about Truvada and everything — tell me about what that was like.
ML: I wanted to show, how can we have the coolest mom moment in a coming out scene. Can we win the title for Coolest Mom in a coming out scene of a movie? The goal basically was, I think we're gonna get you to beat Jennifer Garner and Olivia Colman. We’re going for the gold here.
All kidding aside, it was a great opportunity to define that character even further. Don’t you want to know that your president knows about these things? Forget your mom. I think I want my president knowing these things. Because it means that my community matters to the president of the United States, and without knowing that her son is queer, it matters to Ellen. Ellen didn't have to do any homework to prepare herself for this conversation. Uma and I talked all about it. She’s like, man, this lady’s cool. Yes, she is.
TV: Did you have a favorite scene that you filmed or a favorite scene from the book that you adapted?
ML: Favorite scene that I filmed is Alex and Henry in Alex's bedroom. Because it is just those two actors at the peak of their talents, and understanding their characters so well. It's just a showcase for the three of us. That scene encapsulates the work that the three of us spent the summer doing together.
As an adaptation, my favorite scene in the movie is the V&A.
TV: Oh, yes. That's so beautiful.
ML: I'm very proud of that scene. Talk about taking a challenge from an author and really doing your utmost to live up to that challenge. Very happy with how that scene came out. It was also just a really magical night of filming for us. We were locked into the V&A overnight, and had it to ourselves. Just in terms of a memory, I will never forget that night.
TV: Last question. We've got the Henry point of view bonus chapter in the collector's edition. Is there any hope of a sequel?
ML: I would love to do a sequel — if we have the right story. I think there has to be a better reason than simply the desire to make one. There has to be a compelling story reason. I don't think a sequel is a bad idea, but I don't think a sequel for the sake of doing a sequel is necessarily sufficient. What I will say is the movie is 72 hours old. Before I can start thinking of sequels, I’m still trying to understand the impact this movie has had on the world. And I'm incredibly grateful that it has been received with so much love and warmth and enthusiasm.
